Rice’s new job a real concern

By The Daily News

Published: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 at 09:00 PM.

When President Barack Obama named Susan Rice as his new national security adviser, it was a real slap at America.

Rice has been criticized since September for her appearance on several talk shows after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. That attack, on Sept. 11, 2012, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

In explaining the attack, Rice relied heavily on talking points looking to play down the suspected role of terrorists. With the presidential election campaign as background, Rice asserted that the attack was the result of an anti-Islamic video on YouTube.

Now Rice, who got it so wrong about Benghazi, is advising the president on national security. That should raise some concern.

Rice is moving to the White House from the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And she was a fellow at the Brookings Institution during the 2000s, focusing on global affairs.

From 1997 to 2001, Rice served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs for President Bill Clinton. From 1995 to 1997, Rice was a special assistant to President Clinton and worked on African affairs at the National Security Council. She received her doctorate from Oxford University. By most standards, she is qualified to serve as national security adviser.

Even so, her loyalty to President Obama seems to be her most important qualification.

When President Barack Obama named Susan Rice as his new national security adviser, it was a real slap at America.

Rice has been criticized since September for her appearance on several talk shows after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. That attack, on Sept. 11, 2012, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

In explaining the attack, Rice relied heavily on talking points looking to play down the suspected role of terrorists. With the presidential election campaign as background, Rice asserted that the attack was the result of an anti-Islamic video on YouTube.

Now Rice, who got it so wrong about Benghazi, is advising the president on national security. That should raise some concern.

Rice is moving to the White House from the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And she was a fellow at the Brookings Institution during the 2000s, focusing on global affairs.

From 1997 to 2001, Rice served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs for President Bill Clinton. From 1995 to 1997, Rice was a special assistant to President Clinton and worked on African affairs at the National Security Council. She received her doctorate from Oxford University. By most standards, she is qualified to serve as national security adviser.

Even so, her loyalty to President Obama seems to be her most important qualification.

She broke from the Clinton camp in 2008 to support Obama in the heated Democratic presidential primary. Rice supported Obama over then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. She took center stage in criticizing Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy stances in what must have been an unpleasant surprise for the Clinton team.

Then, in September 2012, during the heat of the election campaign, Rice became the administration’s mouthpiece on the Benghazi debacle. It was a crucial moment. Obama was determined to stand tall on terrorism issues, showing he prevented major attacks on the United States while killing Osama bin Laden in 2011.

But there was film of the consulate burning on television screens. The ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was dead. Obama, in a tight re-election race with Republican Mitt Romney, looked vulnerable.

Rice went on Sunday talk shows and assured the public that it wasn’t a terrorist attack. She asserted that it was demonstrators who got out of hand. Since then, we have learned that the attackers had ties to al-Qaida, and that Rice’s talking points were heavily edited to spin the issue. The effect was to mislead the public into believing Muslims angry about an anti-Islamic video were the culprits.

The Obama administration, led by Rice, obscured the issue through Election Day.

There was some political fallout for Rice. She withdrew her name for the position of secretary of state, after Hillary Clinton retired.

But now Rice is back — a few weeks after yet more congressional hearings on the Benghazi issues — to fill a role that requires no U.S. Senate confirmation. It is a vital role as national security and terrorism have become pre-eminent issues for the White House.